'Truth spoken without moderation reverses itself'
This blog is a source for intellectual exploration. It includes a list of alternative resources and a source of free books. The placement of an article does not imply that I agree with it, merely that I found it thought-provoking. There are also poems and book reviews. Texts written by me are labelled. Readers are free to re-post anything they like.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

NB: Arshia Malik's essays on religiosity, communalism and geo-politics in the South Asian region are timely and thought-provoking. They deserve a wide readership. The best reaction to them I can think of is contained in two proverbs: The yes-man is your enemy, but your friend will argue with you - Russian proverb

Fear is a feeling
induced by perceived danger or threat that occurs in certain types of
organisms, which causes a change in metabolic and organ functions and
ultimately a change in behavior, such as fleeing, hiding, or freezing from
perceived traumatic events. Fear in human beings may occur in ...

What is it about
criticism of religion that garners complete shutdown of civil discourse, or a
grudging admission of the flaws and fallibilities of holy texts with the ever
present "But"? As a human being existing in this world and gradually
comprehending one's place in the tribal hierarchy, the ...

As the news about the
missing activists and bloggers from Pakistan started to spread, I was reminded
of the sustained covert and open war against bloggers, activists, dissenters,
heretics, and civil society in general, across India, Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Bangladesh, Iran and the Maldives. Since ...

Pan-Islamism is a
political movement advocating the unity of Muslims under one Islamic state –
often a Caliphate - or an international organization with Islamic principles.
As a form of religious nationalism, Pan-Islamism differentiates itself from
other pan-nationalistic ideologies, for ...

I am reminded of this
story of Cecil Earle Tyndale-Biscoe, a 19th-century, British missionary
and educationist working in Kashmir. His Wikipedia entry writes: 'In
the late 19th century, Kashmir was a princely state made up of
a Muslim majority ruled by ...

‘Islam’ literally
means submission to the will of God and on earth, it is mostly imams and Muslim
scholars who have taken it upon themselves to interpret the will of God to us
commoners. I remember reading Tehmina Durrani's My Feudal Lord and quickly
ordering her other ...

After World War II
when nation states started emerging and many colonies threw the yoke of
colonialism off, it wasn't entirely because of the ''indigenous'' struggles or
people's movements on the ground but the fact that colonial powers had realised
a people cannot be ruled or governed without ...

As I see the
increasingly sane and rational voices of Pakistan protest the murder of Qandeel
Baloch in such a dishonourable way for not conforming to the patriarchal values
and attitudes of the country, I am thrilled that Pakistan has become a reality
and not just a state of mind that we across the ...

Ramzan 2016 from June
6 to July 6 has been the bloodiest in modern history? This is disturbing for
someone who grew up in 90s Kashmir when the Islamist factions would cease the
shoot and scoot attack tactics against the Indian Army to uphold the holiness
of the month in the freezing winters. That ...

The recent controversy
of a private school asking a female teacher to choose between her job and the
attire of abhaya (long cloak-like robe covering the body with sleeves and a
zipper or knotted over the casual clothes) with a hijab has brought up the
debate on the dress codes of educational ...

Having been a teacher
since 1994 I can sufficiently speak about the transformation that has occurred
in the teacher-student dynamic from authoritarian and the coercion of corporate
punishment to one of rapport and bonding with the students. These days we do
not call ourselves as teachers but ...

The Council of Islamic
Ideology (CII) has proposed its own women protection bill, recommending ‘a
light beating’ for the wife if she defies the husband.The 20-member CII is a
constitutional body which gives recommendations to parliament regarding Islamic
laws. However, the Pakistan ...

When a handful of
scholars since the Crusades and throughout Europe's medieval period began
translating, interpreting, editing, publishing and commenting upon the immense
corpus of primary texts regarding the rise and expansion of Islamic
Civilization, they more or less consciously endeavoured to ...

Whenever we talk about
the medieval period, immediately our mind associates itself with brutality,
ignorance, backwardness, superstition, illiteracy and plagues like 'Black
Death' – the scourge of the medieval period in the West. At the same time, a
Muslim fanatic, moderate and ever apologist ...

I see a lot of
Pakistanis fighting the good fight. Against misogyny, bigotry, discriminatory
laws, for a change of the theocratic constitution to a democratic one, against
poverty, against ignorance and illiteracy, against the plague of radicalism
that Zia's war room plans enabled the country to ...

On 24 April, Omar
Bataweel, a Yemeni teenager was abducted and shot in the head because of his
open secularism and free-thinking posts on his Facebook page. Yemen, an Arab
country in Western Asia currently in conflict is undergoing peace talks. Talks
aimed at resolving the conflict in Yemen are ...

It is always the
mothers who lose out in the end. In the conflicts raged by men the world over,
it is always the mothers who pay a heavy price, losing their children either
physically or in their minds due to trauma. Whether they have given birth to
sons, daughters, transgenders, disabled, ...

Islam pervades all
spheres of life for a Muslim. From bathing rituals to thought policing to how
one should treat or tolerate a non-Muslim often called an infidel or kafir in
the holy text. There are reformers trying to sift between the peaceful Quranic
verses and the violent ones, the authentic ...

It's time the
reformers declare jihad on the extremists hijacking their religion. It would be
an act purely in self defense because the actions of a few are harming the
majority who just want to live peacefully, according to the tenets of their
faith. The concept of a higher jihad and a lower jihad ...

Azar Nafisi, prominent
author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and The Republic of Imagination was targeted
by a professor in Columbia University Hamid Dabashi, for what he called
'self-sexualising' her memoir of the study group in Tehran (the theme of
the book). In what is fast becoming a genre ...

I don't think people
understand the tragedy of an ethnic cleansing, or the pain of having to leave
their homes with just the basic essentials and the clothes on the backs. I see
a lot of empathy, sympathy, charity, help, and outrage pouring in at the
pictures emerging from the Middle-East about the ...

I saw a video of
Nelson Mandela in a 2013 interview with Ted Koppel answering Kenneth Aldman on
the question of the ANC's and Madiba's meetings with Gaddafi, Fidel Castro
and Yasser Arafat whom he had praised. He was asked rather pointedly if he
would want any one of them to be a future

The madrassas of
yesteryear are gone. Gone are the makhtabs - the learning centres which used to
be hubs of knowledge, research, scientific discoveries, and inventions. If you
see the documentaries and movies on the lives of medieval geniuses like Ibn
Sina, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Rushd, and others, you ...

Kathleen E.Taylor is a
research scientist in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the
University of Oxford. In 2005, she presented her research on brainwashing at
the Edinburgh International Science Festival. In response to a question about
the future of neuroscience, Taylor said ...

What do you do when
you have a troublesome neighbour, or an irritating colleague at your workplace?
You either try your best to hold a decent conversation, or maintain a decorum
of a relationship and be cordial or you try to ignore him/her, if they still do
not get the hint and wisen up their act. ...

"Orwellian"
is an adjective describing a situation, idea, or societal condition that George
Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open
society. It denotes an attitude and a brutal policy of draconian control by propaganda,
surveillance, misinformation, denial of truth, ...

What do you do when
you find yourself the custodian of a series of errors, ancient prejudice,
ossified bigotry and ingrained misogyny? Chances are that 90% of the time your
mind, your being, your essence will want to side with the tribe. It takes
courage to call out your own parents/elders for ...

Women have started
reclaiming spaces, rightfully belonging to them which by virtue of unspoken
decree, misogynistic norms and the tacit patriarchal agreement they have been
deprived of and continue to be barred from. Whether it be universities,
religious and holy places, public spaces, or the roles ...

A bizarre case was
filed in the court of the chief judicial magistrate (CJM) in Sitamarhi, north
Bihar, India on 1 February against Lord Ram, the god from Hindu mythology in
Hinduism, for cruelty shown towards his wife, Sita. According to the Indian
Express, the report quoted the complainant as...

In J.K.Rowling’s Harry
Potter Series, there is a whole world of magic created by the author, and
frankly due to the movie franchise quite believable. The non-magic world (the
Muggles) are depicted as a typical society of our times and the magic world of those
books suffers from the evil ...